Shutting down reddit is not for publicity, it's not to convince anyone, it's not to get the message out. It's putting our money where our mouth is.

If we ask others to black out for SOPA, we need to do it ourselves to show solidarity. Not doing so would be incredibly hypocritical, and could well be used against reddit's fight in the media that does notice us.

I don't think it's just about putting our money where our mouth is. A lot of redditors oppose SOPA but have done very little in protest. Maybe this will show them the realities of the consequences of inaction.

Okay but the issue is it won't be Reddit going around asking Facebook and Google to black out their sites, it will be Facebook and Google users. Your above hypothetical conversation would never happen because why would Google or Facebook care what Reddit is doing? This whole solidarity thing is a moot excuse.

That said Reddit is going to blackout anyway and I don't mind, I think using the time to get users to mass campaign other sites to blackout for SOPA and PIPA would be a better idea. But everything is in motion already so I guess we can just hope it works out, though I'm predicting very few people besides Redditors will notice.

You obviously don't know how the Internet works and have not read anything about the subject matter. SOPA threatens the way these websites function and therefore people like mark zuckerberg stand to lose a LOT of revenue. He will still have a social networking site, but he won't be able to run the same business model to make money. Sure, he will lose money on the day, but more than 1 in 12 people on the planet have a Facebook account, so for the sake of preserving the nature of the Internet as we know it I'd say its worth it. And i'd bet my house on him agreeing with that sentiment.

Unfortunately, I don't think Google and Facebook can blackout there sites due to financial agreements with several corporations and the fear of losing investors etc. I could be wrong about this, but it makes sense. They should do something though!

If SOPA passes, then it affects those investors too, seeing as they're invested in a website that is affected by the bill. I think they'd be ok with protecting that investment at a small cost. Collateral damage is dealt with in business on a daily basis, this is just one of those times. And besides, zuckerberg can do whatever he likes with Facebook. Although certain actions may cause tension with those investors, including shutting down the site, I think he'll probably be having some pretty important meetings about it right now!

Indeed, oh and hey users, who are allegedly against sopa, can use their down time from reddit to do something.... oh i don't know... call/write their representatives and tell them you don't want sopa to pass.

Their point is Reddit is a community of people with mostly all the same interests (in this example SOPA). Shutting down a place like GOOGLE or FACEBOOK affects EVERYONE (those who dont know or are in favor of SOPA etc.). There is a huge difference. Personally - shutting down reddit for a day (a week...a month....honestly forever) doesn't affect my views on SOPA (which like you all i oppose)...shutting down a place like Google DOES (for even a minute). Google (and to a much lesser extent bing, yahoo, etc) IS the internet. Reddit is the perspective of a very small niche group of internet users. It's a toy. An awesome toy that helps aggregate interesting news/facts (sometimes) but nonetheless a toy. Of corse we dont want it or any website to ever have to bow down to censorship but maybe there's a better thing we could do that day? we all spend (far too much) time on this platform and could better spend that time doing something like a) write letters b) make phone calls ..... whatever. Personally - reddit goes black i'm going to just jerk around somewhere else. REDDIT - GO A HEAD AND SHUT IT DOWN BUT DO SOMETHING MORE THAN BLACK IT OUT - GIVE US SOMETHING TO DO....in any case i would really work out a world wide day that this happens and not just whenever....it will be in the news for a day and then it will be forgotten.

Protests such as this show the outside world how a huge website like Reddit is -with all its userbase - definitely against SOPA. It's a symbolic act. Especially seen that many other website are thinking about doing the same on that day.

Moreover, I'm sure there are PLENTY of users that don't know about SOPA enough or they think it won't affect them, or are skeptics, etc., even though they don't support it.

The whole point of Reddit is you select which information you read about via subreddits. Believe it or not, its entirely possible to still use reddit without every other post being about SOPA, US politics in general, cats or porn.

Well, see - it's sort of like strikes work. You stop working for a little while, and supposedly the country/government/your bosses get annoyed, and theoretically they start realizing how important you are for the system to work properly.

I see your point, but I don't think the point of the blackout is to convince redditors to be against SOPA. The point of the blackout (IMO) is to send the message that we not only need to be against SOPA, but we also need to be active in working against it. There are plenty of people against SOPA that don't do much about it. Plus, I've already seen one article posted here about the reddit blackout, so it will reach farther than just the reddit audience.

Population is top 75 posts as a result of searching for SOPA and organizing the resulting find by "Top." Used =RAND() to generate random numbers for top 75 posts, selected first 10 in Excel after copying random numbers to a new column and organizing "Smallest to Greatest."

Now, at the moment at least, I am not going to go through and figure out how many of the same people are commenting in each of these threads in an effort to find out how much circle jerking is happening within these posts. I am also not, at the moment, going to run a content analysis on these post topics or even consider what the topic is about, outside of it noting that all threads are against SOPA or posts on those who have come out against SOPA. I would expect there to be some UP/DOWN voting variation dependent on what the Thread was about in the OP and title. There would probably also be some diminishing returns on reposts. I have no way of knowing, without contacting individual up/down voters, why they voted the way they did. Finally, I don't really feel like running a probability equation on how many people in the US would be voting up and down on these posts. However, considering the large number of Americans on reddit (60% of unique visitors [which says nothing of how many of those people are in fact "unique" - think work/home visits]), I feel safe in assuming that most of these upvotes/downvotes comes from them.

I am now going to take some of this basic data here and make a couple comments:

It remains unclear to me how many people on Reddit do or do not support SOPA. Further, it remains unclear how many people are downvoting or upvoting based on their interests in the topic.

In the end, it may be true that a lot of Redditors do, in fact, dislike SOPA. The sheer number of upvotes on Anti-SOPA posts suggests to me that there is a pretty clear dislike of the legislation. The downvotes could be occurring due to a number of reasons: reposts, disinterest in the topic, not wanting to see more SOPA posts crowd out other posts... the potential reasons go on, but I think these would be the most likely.

What I would be most interested in seeing is the number of people who actually don't like SOPA, but are disinterested (don't care) or just don't care about the legislation in general. This strikes me as being something similar to DRM or issues of piracy - there is clearly a constituency who is sincerely opposed to DRM and enjoy pirating. However, a majority of people generally don't care, think about, or consider DRM or participate in piracy.

With regards to Reddit blacking out on the 18th, I would argue that, based on the number of downvotes and a complete guess that at least a portion of those downvotes are due entirely to disinterest, such a move would result in some consciousness raising. The point of many protests, such as stopping traffic by clogging streets, or blocking access to shops, is generally meant to make those people who do not think or care about a given topic suddenly aware of it. Inconvenience is a pretty established and effective form of protest, especially when done well.

Is a Reddit blackout going to be done well? Will it have a consciousness-raising effect on the population? Are those redditors who are currently disinterested in the topic (roughly 57% of my selected population are upvoters, 43% downvoters, so less the 43% are likely due to disinterest in the topic) going to be made more aware of SOPA? Could it potentially raise their interest in the topic? I think that there is a pretty good chance that a Reddit blackout would have a positive affect on at least some of those disinterested Redditors who are currently downvoting SOPA posts. If this gains momentum, and Google or FB also shutdown for the 18th, the effects could spread much further and have a stronger impact overall. However, with Reddit being the one who is currently participating, with an audience of as many as ~21 million viewers (extremely liberal estimate, based entirely on unique visitors), the inconvenience may annoy some but have at least a good effect here.

Finally, considering that all cases in this small sample are from either Technology or Politics (both default subreddits), there is a good chance that a lot of people generally see these posts. However, for those who are unsubscribed from those subreddits, where SOPA posts seem to have the strongest saturation, it brings the general affect of the blackout to those who would otherwise rarely experience, note, read, or consider the impact of SOPA legislation on their Internet experience.

tl;dr: I think that the Reddit blackout is warranted, an excellent idea, and will do more than add to some sort of Reddit anti-SOPA circlejerk. There is a good chance it will impact those who are disinterested, and may even result in them suddenly thinking, "Huh, maybe I too, should call my congressman."

If reddit is blacked-out, redditors might actually call their government representative rather than just sitting and giggling about funny pictures of cats all afternoon (not that there's anything wrong with that)

Hopefully, it will also move American redditors to contact their legislators. For real. Instead of just talking about how bad this potential legislation is. If even half the American redditors would contact their legislators... can you imagine?

Enter your zip code here, and it will send a letter to your reps, or EVEN BETTER, take the two minutes and actually CALL the rep. You'll talk with a staffer who take your opinion (if you're worried what to say, you can just read from the web page if you like), and then ask you for your name and address. (They want to verify you live in the district.) Be polite, but let your voice be heard: https://wfc2.wiredforchange.com/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=8173

Jeff Fortenberry's office, Phone:(202) 225-4806 . I asked how Mr. Fortenberry is planning on voting, but the staffer said he couldn't discuss it. I politely asked why, and he said he was an intern - basically a message-taker - but would have a permanent staff member call me back to discuss. I gave him all my contact information.

Ben Nelson's office, Phone:(202) 224-6551 : The staff member didn't know how Mr. Nelson was planning on voting, but took my contact information and my opinion.

Some redditors are indifferent to SOPA, or at least don't see the extent of damage it would do to this site and to others. Part of this is to make those redditors realize just how serious this might for for them.

With so many unique viewers daily, I would wager that many Redditors do not know what it is or know ENOUGH about it to care. The point of the blackout is also to protest through action rather than words.

The point isn't to change peoples minds but to get people to actually act on it. Congress doesn't care what we think until we flood their email boxes and shut down the phone lines, and a temporary shutdown might spur people to action.

Reddit generates a large amount of traffic to other websites, by linking to these websites we're generating more hits to other news sites and sites of various uses. By blacking out Reddit the idea is to show an impact on other parts of the internet, if Google were to do this it would have a massive impact, Facebook perhaps as well. It's a spider-web situation.

It puts our money where our mouth is. There are what, almost 35 million unique visitors a month? Shutting down a site that 35 million people visit is going to get a lot more attention than just talking about it on a site that 35 million people visit.

When a person protests, they're not trying to convince themself to be against what they are protesting. They are trying to bring attention to the issue. Reddit blacking out is supposed to bring attention to the issue by getting public attention.

Just because mostly all of Reddit knows about SOPA doesn't mean they've done anything to stop it. When presidential candidates go to places and give speeches, the people who show up aren't the people that are going to vote for someone else. The president goes there to talk to the people who are already in support of him and to get them to actually go vote for him instead of just thinking, "damn, he'd make a good president."

I'm glad that Reddit is blacking out too. We can't go and ask everyone else to black out, and then not do it ourselves... It's not to convince people on reddit that SOPA is bad, it is to be part of the movement.

In addition to what's already been mentioned, you cannot honestly believe that the millions of unique users that come to reddit all care enough to inform themselves or know about SOPA or what it truly is. With homepage customizations etc Id bet a good percentage of people who visit here still have no idea. Blacking out the site and replacing it with links and information may convince those people to finally spend a few minutes and read up on it.

In addition to the random folks who get sent here from searches and other link following will also be hit in the face with it. It's a bit small minded to think that every reader on a site as diverse as Reddit is of a single mind about SOPA, either out of ignorance or just because even after reading they still agree with the bill.

Just my two cents. If it makes you feel better I'm sure you aren't the only person who shares this opinion but no offense, I hope you aren't the majority.

Reddit and other sites shutting down is a good thing. How many redditors have actually called, wrote, or emailed their congressmen? Maybe w/o reddit and other sites for a day people will become more active.

Title: This is reddit logic. Hope I am not the only person who thinks this

Meme: Scumbag Redditor

ALMOST NOBODY IN SUPPORT OF SOPA VISITS REDDIT. LETS SHUT DOWN THE SITE FOR 12 HOURS IN PROTEST!
THAT WILL SURELY CONVINCE THE PEOPLE WHO ARE ALREADY AGAINST SOPA THAT THEY SHOULD BE AGAINST SOPA. WAIT, HOW DO PROTESTS WORK AGAIN?

I think the part that is of note is that Reddit started it. They were first to announce a blackout. Then, the cheezbuurger network declares support, and a blackout, and other sites as well. Ultimately, I feel that's the point. To show that a major website with thousands of daily visitors can do it. And so should you.

I hope you are the only person who thinks this because it's extremely narrow-minded.

This is not about shutting reddit down for the supporters of SOPA, this is to inspire action in the people who have been loosely following the news. Nothing puts the message forward better than this. It's a great idea and you are dumb person.

You also have to remember there is a massive amount of traffic generated from reddit to external sites like imgur, cracked, qkme and so many others. There are many external sites that will see a very large drop in traffic and get a taste of what will happen (hypothetically) if SOPAa/PIPA is signed into being. This may spike interest from sites that currently think they are are not impacted or are simply unaware.

Shutting down reddit will not accomplish anything. Reddit appeals to young people. Young people don't pay much in the way of taxes (most pay nothing and get a refund) and contribute practically nothing to political campaigns.

Couple this with the fact that most young people don't vote despite being extremely vocal about political opinions, and PR folks tell candidates to be polite but ignore the 20 something crowd that reddit's community is primarily composed of.

You'd have to get Ford, General Motors, Walmart, Amazon.com, Apple, Microsoft, Verizon, and other companies like that to black out their sites to have any impact.

I think you'd be surprised how many Redditors still don't know about SOPA, and I think nearly all of them would be opposed if they did know. If it garners any support for the anti-SOPA movement, it's worth it.

Clearly you've never seen what a redditor does when deprived of reddit for twelve hours. If you had, you'd understand the havoc that will be unleashed when Reddit blacks out on Jan 18th, and all those redditors are left with nothing to do.

Sure, most people on Reddit are probably against SOPA, but sitting in your room browsing Reddit while being against SOPA doesn't accomplish much. Maybe being bared from their favorite website for a day will be annoying enough for them to actually write their representative in congress or spread the word to people who might not know what SOPA even is.

Wikipedia would be the uranium of this atomic bomb. If Google would make random searches (especially for entertainment related searches) come up with nothing, then you'd see a lot more understanding and support.

Then again, you might have competitors like Bing waiting eagerly to capture market share by being available during that time.

It's like the stoners who stand on corners trying to legalize weed by saying "hey mannnn, I toke every day and I'm fine, mannnn" in that stereotypical stoner voice.

So you're taking a stand? Cool, good for you. And all the other supporters and your friends totally love you for it. But the people against legalization? All they see is yet another stoner trying to make his vice easier.

It doesn't show them the bigger picture, the money moving away from the drug cartel and gangs and dealers and into our schools. The lack of liberties. The fact that it is, in truth, a safe drug (or at least as safe as a drug can be-that shit's safer then tylenol). They just see a stoner complaining about a stoners problems. Watching his own back.

Good on him for taking a stand, but...does it really help? Does it change one single persons beliefs?

What should really happen is that Reddit says it will go dark for 12 hours, but instead it goes dark for a week. That might actually piss people off enough to spur them to more aggressive SOPA counter measures.

Reddit doing so makes it... well, less daunting for other websites to join in, such as the cheezburger network, wikipedia, and hopefully google or even facebook. Now THAT will get people talking. Sure there will be a few frontpaged examples of "OMG Wtuf wuz dat who carez bout some dam intnet thin" from someone truly ignorant of SOPA/etc., but by and large, it will get people informed.

Cheezburger network is following us, wikipedia might follow us, Won't be shocked if TPB followed us.

Reddit doing this has brought the idea of the blackout into the minds of other site owners, set a date, and is leading by example. How long have we seen people talk about a blackout but no one set a date, no sites made any concise plans. Now look at them, wikipedia's owner REALLLLLLY wants to follow suit, CBN is following us in the black out. There are a bunch of smaller sites owned by redditors that are gonna follow us in the black out.

None of this would have happened without someone deciding to do something now. Reddit did just that.

Can't wait for the 18th to see how many other sites do something, anything.

I understand where you are coming from, but you assume reddit is a self-contained community that has no interaction in the outside world. The fact that a website this large is willing to go black is a story the press can't ignore. I've already read several articles about the Reddit blackout in the media. This helps spread the word.

I think that the main goal of the Reddit blackout is to set an example so that other websites consider following suit. We're saying, "Look at us! We have millions of users and we're willing to risk losing a whole bunch of that to stop this stupid piracy act! Hey Facebook, Google and Twitter, why don't you guys join in."

Now that I think about this, Facebook might still be mad at us for creating Annoying Facebook Girl, not to mention all the screenshots on r/atheism.

I was kind of thinking the same thing. Instead of protesters having a march and demonstrating, they decide to go home and shut the curtains and spend the day quietly napping. That's sure going to convince those other guys they're wrong.

Millions of Reddit users. Obviously all of them know about and oppose SOPA. Some of them couldn't just be coming here for stupid animal memes, and be unfamiliar with the political goings on of their country. This is America after all.

Making shitty memes and being exactly the sort of inactive plebe doing nothing about SOPA that Reddit is trying to coax into action?

Yeah, thought so. Take three guesses which one I think has a better chance of convincing someone, anyone really, that they need to get active about opposing SOPA. Stuff like this is low-minded and insulting, like saying MLK Jr's marches are "a bunch of black people walking, wtf does it mean?"

1.) It shows the other big sites (who are very much aware of how Reddit interplays with the rest of the Internet in terms of sales/etc) that "the savvy internet user" is against the bill and applies pressure for them to also black out... which will certainly be seen by many more people.

2.) It will generate an enormous amount of phone calls to legislators who, if this bill passes, may be summarily booted out of office. The federal government is definitely paying attention to this website and the influence it has over a very important part of society.

Glad someone else notices. Its not just reddit though. The only sites that are doing a blackout are the ones that only attract people that are already aware of it. I understand its the whole symbolic thing, but its not going to do shit for raising awareness.

It will motivate the armchair activists (most of reddit) to do something other than bitch about it in a comment. Call your congressman. Write a letter. Commenting and posting memes don't do much, so shutting down reddit might convince some of us to go a little further.

Although most Redditors are opposed to SOPA, most of those opposed fail to speak out about it. This will convince some of the outspoken to realize the reality of the situation and do something about it.

The people who are railroading SOPA through want to shut down "illegitimate" sites. Even if you are generating your own content, unless you are Sony or something, those people don't think you're legitimate.

You could have a site featuring content that is yours alone, that doesn't rely on using content from any other location, and they don't consider you legitimate, because you're not as big as Sony.

Corporations are people. Small companies might not be considered legitimate either.

This is some real doublespeak stuff going on. Its scary, and I am not sure what to expect.

The blackout approach does help inform the people that will be impacted the most, but some Senators believe that the competitors of the corporations they sponsor are not legitimate, even though the whole concept of capitalism is competition through production.

This is supposed to be against piracy. You know what piracy is. I know what piracy is. Do the Senators know? If I have a media company that offers media of my own, and I am seen as a competitor of whichever corporation has Senator X i their pocket, than maybe I am seen as a pirate when really I am producing my own IP.

It has already gone down. A site was forced to take down content over what we know to be a spurious IP claim. Another company was unable to showcase their original content because their competitor claimed it was a violation of copyright when it was nothing of the kind.

Either they don't know what they are doing, or they are playing a game, or both. Since the obvious objective of SOPA is to black out the Internet, I am not sure why everyone thinks voluntarily blacking out their sites is going to help.

I also see it as trying to prod Redditors who haven't yet to contact their representatives. I'm fairly certain that a lot of folks who come here are procrastinators to some degree, so taking Reddit away and reminding them to actually take action may result in some more congressional pressure.

OccupyReddit

I agree. We should really do something stronger. shutting down bigger sites is the answer. Reddit as big as it is is still pretty underground. something like google, or wikipedia would be ore effective...

It's a chain reaction, my friend.
If Reddit shuts down, imagine how many hits imgur will get. It will drop drastically.
If imgur notices Reddit protesting SOPA through this and sees how it hurts their site, then they will openly protest SOPA. When million of people can't get on imgur to see links because of SOPA protests, they will realize it, too.

That's not how I see it. With reddit shutting down, other companies running websites are going to look at it and think 'you know what, i should do that too'. The blackout will (hopefully) inspire other companies to take a stand and blackout their websites as well. the cheezburger network is going down then too, perhaps more and more websites will join in.The more websites, the greater the spread of information.

blacking out reddit is an important step! i don't see how this is hard to grasp!

Also, although reddit appears to be a bunch of "go-getters" (lol) with the way we rally to raise money or support causes; the large majority of reddit users are lazy and apathetic.. so a reddit blackout is a way of trying to get not only the people who are productive members of reddit, but ALL reddit users, including lazy anons, to see the potential impact of SOPA and hopefully motivate them to speak out.

Just because all SOPA related posts make it to the front page doesn't mean most redditors are willing to do much more than click an up arrow or comment-snipe karma.

When Gandhi fasted for his country and his people, it didn't mean other people couldn't eat. It still made a huge impact because he was so generally influential, even though he wasn't friends with EVERYONE in India. Reddit's SOPA protest is directly analogous.

Really what this is all about is getting people to get their ass in gear about it, as well as getting a spot on news programs and blogs about it. The more you get the word out, the more effectively you can fight it.